Making agricultural intervention attractive to farmers in Africa through inclusive innovation systems

Effectively identifying and integrating the fundamental issues that guide Sub Saharan Africa (SSA) farmers’ management decision in their quest to meet the household food security and income generation targets into agricultural intervention planning is perhaps the most important challenge to unlock current technology adoption traps and identify feasible pathways to actively engage farmers in the co-design of profitable and resilient farming systems. The challenge is exacerbated by supply driven intervention approaches designed mainly to improve agronomic responses through single sized technological packages, that are failing to unmask the social contours of technology adoption in Africa. The highly diverse farming environments, contrasting socioeconomic contexts and circumstances where agriculture takes place in Africa, calls for a renewed look into the understanding of the social drivers of technology adoption. Here, understanding how the whole farm enterprise functions and is managed is critical to tailor agricultural intervention. In this short review, the research gaps and recommendations for the validation of integrated and sociotechnical intervention approaches that are more likely to improve farmers’ engagement and technology adoption in Africa are discussed.